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Seeking opinion on Cortina Master Courses | ||
Tags: Audio-lingual | Language Program | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| BrianDeAlabama Groupie United States Joined 4308 days ago 89 posts - 113 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 5 20 October 2013 at 11:39pm | IP Logged |
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I have tried to find some Cortina Master Linguist Courses on Amazon and other sites to
find a lower price for the material. Do any of you guys have the Master Linguist Course in any of their languages? If so, are the CDs good quality? DO the cds contain only the target language in the audio? Cortina languages have their courses listed for around $130 USD. I have their books for Spanish, German & Modern Greek. I'd appreciate any feedback. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 3841 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes Studies: German | Message 2 of 5 21 October 2013 at 3:34pm | IP Logged |
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A couple of years ago, I bought the complete Cortina "Master Linguist Course in German" for 130 $US from the company's website. Here is my appreciation of the course:
Course Contents Essentially, (a) one small, hard-covered course manual the contents of which are similar, if not identical, to their "Conversational German in 20 Lessons" manual, (b) 8 cds of recordings to accompany the course manual, (c) one small, hard-covered reading manual. The additional material is of negligible value. Comes packaged in a large plastic case. Course Structure The course structure is somewhat similar to that of the Linguaphone or Assimil courses. Each of the 20 lessons begins with a presentation of the new vocabulary. This is followed by an extended "situational dialogue" on the left-hand page. The right-hand page contains both an English translation and a phonetic version of the German text. Grammar notes are printed at the bottom of the page with numbered references to a surprisingly good grammar in the appendices. The reading manual presents a German text along with a translation. There is very little additional exercise material. Recordings on 8 CDs The recordings are entirely in German. The voices are very clear and well-modulated. However, the initial dialogues are delivered at such a painfully slow rate that the speech comes across as unnatural and stilted. While they do pick up speed in the later lessons, they never seem to reach conversational speed. Level Achieved Total vocabulary is about 2,000 words. The level achieved is comparable to just about any other introductory self-study language course; that is, somewhere around A2. Overall Impression The course is well-structured, but dated. The dialogues were written at sometime in the early 1950's and have not been updated. The overall quality is quite acceptable and you can, indeed, learn some basic German from this course, but you will NOT be "wowed" by the material. I really hate giving negative reviews, but you should consider almost any other of the literally hundreds of better, more up-to-date courses available, at comparable or lower prices. If you had bought this course in 1960, you would probably have been impressed. Buying it in 2013 could leave you saying "now isn't that quaint!". 12 persons have voted this message useful | |
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4478 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 3 of 5 21 October 2013 at 6:12pm | IP Logged |
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I second everything Speakeasy said above. I aquired the Cortina courses for German and Spanish. It's a good method and it will get you to that A2ish point if you use it properly and apply yourself. However, this can be said for a great many courses. The vocab IS outdated somewhat and the dialogues are probably not ones you would hear in modern conversation, but the grammar notes are good and overall it is pretty decent. I do NOT, however, think they are worth the money.
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| BrianDeAlabama Groupie United States Joined 4308 days ago 89 posts - 113 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 5 21 October 2013 at 7:34pm | IP Logged |
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Thank you guys for the advice. I thought their prices were a little too high. I liked the format on the Spanish
version I've been using but it definitely contains a portion of dated vocabulary. I think you guys just persuaded me not to spend $100+ on their Master Linguist Course. I'll wait till someone sells them used on Amazon. From the sounds of it I'd maybe be willing to spend on $30-$45 on it in good condition. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Mountolive Pro Member United States Joined 4248 days ago 10 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 5 23 October 2013 at 6:55am | IP Logged |
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I have the Cortina Master Course for Spanish. I bought it used on Ebay for $40. Since I also have the Assimil Spanish with Ease course and have gone through both courses I will do just a short comparison.
My impression is that Cortina's method is somewhat similar to Assimil's method, but somewhat more comprehensive in its scope. In both methods, the main teaching method is dialogues accompanied by grammar notes, and high quality audio. I personally think that the Cortina Master Course is superior to Spanish with Ease in several ways. First, Cortina just blows Spanish with Ease away on grammar. Spanish with Ease sucks with respect to grammar, frankly, although it is easy enough to supplement it with something else. In my opinion, Cortina's grammar notes to the dialogues are better than Assimil's. The Cortina main text also contains a Reference Grammar which is about 100 pages long which is one of the better concise Spanish grammars I have seen. So I would say that Cortina is superior and more self-contained than Spanish with Ease in the grammar department. Second, the main Cortina text has English-Spanish and Spanish-English vocabularies at the back, an omission in Spanish with Ease that I found quite annoying. Third, although I would guess that there is slightly more material in Spanish with Ease that the main Cortina text, the Cortina Master Course also comes with supplementary materials. The most significant of these supplementary materials is another text, "Espanol en Espanol," which is a continuation of the main text in 20 more lessons, and which is entirely in Spanish. Even the grammar footnotes are in Spanish. There is unfortunately no audio and no vocabularies at the end of this book, but I still think it is very well done. And it is very much designed to complement the main text and be accessible to someone who has completed the main text. As a result, you get a very level-appropriate 200-page graded reader, something you don't get with Assimil. The Cortina audio is quite high quality (I would say equal in quality to Assimil's audio) but, as mentioned above, it starts out slow and never gets really fast. However, toward the end of the main Cortina text (particularly the last four lessons, which are reading passages rather than dialogues) the speed is comparable to the speed in Spanish with Ease. Spanish with Ease is much stronger than Cortina on colloquial Spanish, and is more up to date. Cortina is also maybe a little drier and more serious; Assimil a little more light-hearted and entertaining. Overall I would say the Cortina method is better designed and (considering the main text and the "Espanol en Espanol" text together) has more learning material than Assimil. I may be somewhat biased in favor of Cortina, however, because I went through the Cortina method first and felt that I didn't get a lot out of Assimil after that, other than pronunciation practice and some useful colloquial phrases. $130 is pretty steep for the Cortina Master Course, but if you can find it used or get a deal on its somewhere it is well worth looking at. The materials are well-designed and work very well together. Newer is not necessarily better, and while there may in fact be a better beginning Spanish course out there, I haven't seen it. Edited by Mountolive on 23 October 2013 at 7:04am 7 persons have voted this message useful |
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